While She Naps

How to Repair a Stuffed Animal: Restuffing

This post is part of "Animal Hospital: Intensive Care for the Intensely Loved," an occasional series  in which I show you how to make common repairs on your child's favorite stuffed animal. See the first post here. From straightforward fixes, like sewing up a burst seam, to more complex repairs, like replacing paw pads and reattaching jointed limbs, my intention is to help you mend and care for the special softies in your family's life.

When a stuffed animal has been very, very loved it can begin to sag. Being hugged, served tea, used as a pillow (and a tissue), washed and washed again - all of this can leave a special lovey looking rather slumped over. Sometimes the stuffing inside shifts and compresses to such a degree that portions of the body are rendered rather limp and hollow.

To remedy this situation the stuffed animal will need to be restuffed.

I recommend purchasing a bag of polyester fiberfill to use as stuffing. You can find fiberfill at most fabric stores, and even at big box craft stores. Fiberfill is a good choice because a toy stuffed with fiberfill is easy to care for. It can be washed by hand in the sink with warm soapy water, or it can be put in the washing machine on a gentle cycle and you can put it in the dryer without worrying that the stuffing will shift, bunch up, shrink, or otherwise deteriorate.

To demonstrate restuffing a well-loved toy I'd like to introduce you to Crane Man. Don't be fooled by her name: Crane Man is a girl. When I first met her she really stole my heart. Look at those big orange eyes. But she could hardly sit up. Her neck and limbs were totally empty of stuffing and she was very floppy.

To begin restuffing you need to open up the toy's body. Start by searching along the seams to find the area through which the toy was stuffed when it was originally made. If you examine the seams carefully and you'll find one that looks a little different from the others. It may be a bit bumpy or crooked or the fur might be tucked under there. Check along the back, between the legs, and in other inconspicuous areas because those are spots where toy designers often leave openings.

In order to open the seam, you'll need a seam ripper. I don't recommend using scissors because with scissors you run the risk of accidentally cutting a hole in the fabric instead of just cutting the stitches. Use your seam ripper to carefully cut through the stitches at the opening. If you're not sure how to use a seam ripper, I recommend watching this video first.

Crane Man had been opened and restuffed once before, then sewn together rather messily. I carefully unpicked all of the stitches. You can see her skin is pretty threadbare so be careful!

Pull off small pieces of stuffing, about the size of large gumballs, and push it into the body in the hollow areas. For a really fragile toy like this one I suggest that you use your fingers for this job so that you can be very sensitive to the fabric's strength. A stuffing tool like a chopstick or hemostats could very easily tear a hole in the skin.

Use your palms to rub the toy as you stuff, evening out the stuffing and making sure there are no hollow parts or lumps. You may want to keep the toy a bit squishy or you may want to stuff it firmly. For an old toy like Crane Mane, I recommend going light on the stuffing to avoid bursting thorugh the weaker areas of the fabric.

Once you're satisfied, close the opening with ladder stitch. I like to use extra-strong thread to close openings because it can stand up to being tugged and pulled and washed multiple times.

After I finished restuffng Crane Man I went ahead and repaired some holes in the especially threadbare parts of her body, too.

I used all-purpose thread to carefully ladder stitch the fabric together in these areas.

Crane Man's owner came by to fetch her before I took her "after" portrait, but she is now nice and perky and ready for action.

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I hope this installment in Animal Hopital: Intensive Care for the Intensely Loved is helpful to you and if you have any particular stories about the loss or repair of a favorite lovey, please share.

Since I began this project readers have sent me some interesting link related to lovey repair. First, a New York City mother-daughter team that offers a professional lovey repair service and second, a super adorable illustration of special stuffing animals hung out to dry after being washed.

In the next installment I'll be talking about how to replace paw pads. We'll meet a very special world-traveling lamb (she's even been swimming on several occasions) with a most distinctive name: Lamby.

How to Repair a Special Stuffed Animal: Applying a Patch

When I was a child I had a very special stuffed animal dog named Barnard. He was all brown except for the white lining on his ears and his feet were weighty, like beanbags. I carried Barnard around by one ear while sucking my thumb for...well for more years than I care to admit (Yes, I sucked my thumb until I was 13. Don't judge.) One day when I was seven or eight-years-old the stitches on Barnard's ear finally gave way and it fell off.

My mom doesn't really sew. We didn't have a sewing machine and I don't remember her ever sewing, but she fixed it. She sewed it on backward, with the white lining facing out, but I still loved Barnard despite his changed appearance.

Because that's the thing. Even if you don't sew, you'll get out the needle and thread to repair a special stuffed animal for a child.

Beloved stuffed animals become a member of the family and are often as important to the parents as they are to the child. If you're a parent and you've ever lost your child's lovey you know what I'm talking about. If it get's dropped on a walk, or left in a restaurant, or in the airport (don't even think about it!) your heart is broken. These toys are irreplaceable. Even if you can find the same stuffed animal again, it doesn't feel or look the way that old, well-loved one did.

Now I'm a mom of three little girls and I'm a stuffed animal designer. I'm pretty confident that I can repair my daugthers' special toys when they become frayed and threadbare, when the seams burst or the stuffing compresses, or if an ear falls off. And I can show you how so that you can make expert repairs, too!

This post is the first in a new occasional series called "Animal Hospital: Intensive Care for the Intensely Loved" in which I will show you how to make common repairs on your child's favorite stuffed animal. From simple fixes like sewing up a burst seam to more complex repairs like replacing paw pads and reattaching jointed limbs, my intention is to help you mend and care for the special softies in your family's life.

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To prepare for this series I put a post up on the Wellesley Mother's Forum list serve asking if anyone's child had a special stuffed animal in need of repair. The Mother's Forum is a pretty active group in town, nearly 600 members strong. To say I was deluged with requests would be an understatement. The stuffed animals that came in were of every variety from a handmade horse that was a gift from a great aunt to a lamb that had traveled the world and had been swimming on several occasions, this was a very special and well-loved crew.

I photographed each of them before, during, and after their visit to my Animal Hospital in order to illustrate how to perform the most common repairs. I hope you'll enjoy seeing them restored to health.

To kick off the series let's meet a very endearing little guy named Pigawig. When Pigawig arrived it was clear that his snout had been repaired once before, but the repair was now completely threadbare. Here he is:

 

Here's a close-up of his snout.

That bit of orange was the old stuffing peeking out through a hole that had developed many years prior. The threadbare satin was a patch that had been put over the hole, but was now almost completely worn away. Like my dear Barnard, Pigawig had been fixed, but poorly. The patch was too large and didn't match the original material.

I took a seam ripper and very carefully removed the old patch. Then I added some polyfill stuffing to flesh out his collapsed snout.

I cut a new, more appropriately sized patch from pink fleece. It was just about 1/4 inch larger than the area that needed covering.

I folded the edges to the back by 1/4 inch and used a simple running stitch to temporarily baste them that way.

I pinned the patch in place and then I ladder stitched it to his snout using light pink thread. Be sure to tie a double know before trimming off the thread.

The patch stands out quite a bit because it is clean and new, but after a few romps outside and a couple of hugs to tear-stained cheeks it'll blend right in. And with an appropriately sized patch Pigawig looks more similar to his original handsome self.

I hope this first installment is helpful to you and if you have any particular stories about the loss or repair of a favorite lovey, please share.

In the next installment I'll be talking about what to do when toy stuffing has become extremely compressed with a wonderful bear named Crane Man (she's a girl).